


resentment

by usingmydegree



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Ghost Eddie Kaspbrak, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Resentment, Rituals, Supernatural Elements, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, eddie is dead but still here, mild necromancy, stan is more mentioned? patty is a main character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usingmydegree/pseuds/usingmydegree
Summary: They all hug him but Richie knows now. They don't care. They don’t care because they got out. They got out and they're free to live the rest of their lives. They get to be happy. They get to live, they get to move on and work past all the fucked up shit a clown used against them.Richie doesn't get that. Richie isn't allowed to have a happy ending.Look, I'm just bitter, okay?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 41





	1. the things you leave behind

**Author's Note:**

> Me, bitter about burying gays? Noooo, never,,,,
> 
> Anyway, TRIGGER WARNING for specifically canon typical gore imagery. They come out of nowhere sometimes, so be aware of that before reading!
> 
> Eddie does live, eventually. The second and final chapter of this fic will deal with how Richie brings him back, along with them finally getting their happy ending together. Total length should be around 15k.
> 
> Let me know if there's anything you would like tagging! I'd be more than happy to tag it.

Eddie wakes up in the cistern to Richie’s hand on his face. He cannot feel the warmth of it on his skin. He cannot feel the pressure of it. It strikes him, also, that he cannot feel the pain of his insides being newly relocated to outside his body.

Richie curls fingers around Eddie’s cheek and looks in his eyes and says, “Eddie, we got Pennywise, man.”

And his smile is contagious, all up more on one side and crinkling his left eye, boyish and charming. So Eddie smiles with him, and lifts a hand up to cup Richie’s face back, maybe in preparation to do something daring. He forgets about being unable to feel. He's shocked when his hand goes right through Richie’s jaw, wavers inside his head. Eddie goes still. Realisation builds, on both sides.

“Eddie?”

A long, stretching pause. All eyes on Richie. Pity.

“He’s alright. No, he's just hurt," Richie insists. "We’ve gotta get him out of here, he's hurt. Ben—we can carry him. He's okay, we've gotta get him out of here.”

_I’m gone._

Eddie knows it, and yet he doesn't want to be left behind. It's horrible down here. It’s dark and it's filthy and he doesn't know how this works, if he's going to be tied to his body. He doesn't know how this works. He doesn't know.

“Richie.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Honey. Honey, he's dead.”

Richie hugs Eddie’s body to him, pulls it forwards against his chest and tucks his chin over Eddie’s body’s shoulder. For a moment, Eddie sees himself overlaid, then he leans with his body. Lets himself pretend, just for a moment, that Richie really is hugging him.

And then everyone is dragging Richie away.

The place is collapsing. Eddie understands; they would all be crushed if they stayed any longer. They have to get out. They have to pull Richie, kicking and screaming and crying, to the surface or else he would let himself be buried at Eddie’s side.

Eddie doesn't want that, but it also doesn't mean that Eddie wants to be left alone.

Rocks descend around him, It’s lair collapsing in on itself, imploding, and all Eddie can think is that he doesn't want to be left down here, doesn't want to be alone in the dirt and the dark, doesn't want to be abandoned in a cave and tied to his own body for eternity, doomed to watch himself rot.

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and doesn't feel the pull of skin that would come from it, he leans forwards and presses his hands firm to his face, draws his knees up and into himself and ignores the way he can't feel any of it. Eddie thinks of Richie, pulling Eddie's bloody body to him and cradling his cheek. Eddie thinks about how stupid his last words were but about how he only ever wanted to make sure Richie was happy. Didn't want Richie to worry. Eddie could die, but god forbid he ever made Richie worry.

He thinks about Richie, torn from him, kicking up dust and stones as the rest of the Losers took him from him. Thinks of broken glasses with blood in the cracks. His blood in the cracks. He thinks of tear tracks down mud and blood stained cheeks. Thinks of that stupid, soft leather jacket and how it's still down here with him, a little piece of Richie left behind too.

Eddie thinks of Richie and he thinks and he thinks and he thinks.

When he opens his eyes, he's no longer in the cistern.

When he opens his eyes, Eddie is sat on the street outside of Neibolt house and Richie is still crying, still screaming.

Heartbroken.

Eddie watches him, unblinking.

And when Richie wears himself out, is too tired to keep screaming, Eddie watches as he withdraws into himself, watches as he puppets his own body and mentally takes himself out of the situation.

The group get Richie to stand.

Eddie stands with them.

He finds it isn't very hard at all to walk at Richie's side after that.

The quarry is the same as it always has been.

Five idiots swimming now instead of seven.

Eddie stands in the water, and does not feel it on his skin – not the chill, not the pressure, not the movement of the rippling waves coming from everyone else. He looks down at his feet and sees them, still shoed and socked, stand unblemished and dry in the water. A figure overlapping lapping currents.

Next to him, Richie sits on a submerged rock. He rubs his thumb over the crack of his glasses under the water and Eddie knows what he's thinking because Eddie is thinking it too; that's his blood. Dried in the cracks. It's not going to come out in this grey-water. It'll need some proper cleaning.

Thirty feet away from them, Beverly and Ben kiss in the water.

Eddie watches them, then turns and watches as Richie watches them.

Love they're not allowed to have.

Don't they care? Don't they care at all that Eddie's body is down there in the dirt and the cold? Don't they care that they left him there to rot in the place he would hate most? Don’t they care that Richie doesn't think he’ll be able to live past this?

Richie's fingers slip where he rubs at the cracks in his glasses and they go tumbling into the depths of the quarry. His vision blurs more than it already was as he watches them sink. Somebody asks him something, something he knows is about Eddie, and he crumples in on himself again.

The sob comes from somewhere deeper now. Before, the screaming was all in the back of his throat, his lungs. This, it comes from below his stomach, somewhere deep deep down inside of himself. It swells in the back of his ribcage and vibrates through his organs. It runs his insides raw.

They all hug him but Richie knows now. They don't care. They don’t care because they got out. They got out and they're free to live the rest of their lives. They get to be happy. They get to live, they get to move on and work past all the fucked up shit a clown used against them.

Richie doesn't get that. Richie isn't allowed to have a happy ending.

When they're all done hugging him, performing the action of caring, Bill splashes him with a fist-full of grey-water. It hits Richie in the face and he flinches, reminded instantly of Eddie above him, a sudden spray of viscera, and blood seeping into cracked glasses.

Richie lies awake that night in the townhouse, listening to the sounds of the others downstairs crescendo and abate. He lays, eyes fixated on the patterns in the textured ceiling, and he wonders if Eddie kissed him out of the deadlights.

He must have, right? That’s how it works. That’s how it worked with Bev and Ben.

But Bev and Ben also got their happy ending, so maybe he's wrong.

Maybe this is just another delusion in Richie's long history of trying to convince himself he deserves better.

He’s too afraid to ask the others. If Eddie didn't kiss him then he’ll out himself and look disgustingly desperate while doing so. They’ll look at him with something like concern, like pity, until he goes back to being plain old Richie. Back to being normal.

But he can't go back to normal anymore. Eddie's not here.

Eddie's not here and they're all four of them downstairs drinking like two of their friends being dead is something to be celebrated. Richie has lost everything that could have been regained from his wasted life in one fell swoop, and nobody else seems to care.

They get to have their happy endings.

Eddie, Stan, and Richie don't.

For two days, Richie lays in bed at the townhouse. He gets up for the usual things: food, toilet, changing his shirt the one time he pours Pepsi Max Cherry down his front, swearing at himself the entire time. Mostly though, he lays in bed and thinks. Allows his thoughts to repeat on a loop. Circling themselves. His old therapist would have called it a spiral. Richie decides not to put a label on it.

Eddie, for the most part, does the same.

He stands by Richie's bed, then he sits on it, and then he finally builds up enough courage – enough longing for a closeness he cannot feel – that he allows himself to lay down next to where Richie is curled into a tight little lump under the sheets. Eddie lays on his back and stares up at the ceiling Richie has grown tired of looking at. Their own shared view.

He doesn't know what Richie is thinking. He doesn't wholly know what he himself is thinking. Every thought cycles around the same core at it's heart.

_This is not fair._

“Hey, Rich.”

The knocking had started on day three.

Maybe they thought they were giving him space by waiting this long to check in. Maybe they're only doing this now because they feel bad for waiting so long. Do they care? Is it all just to clear their own consciences? Do they feel bad for being happy while Richie is struggling in the dark of a dingy hotel bedroom, atrophying under unchanged covers, fighting to put back together the broken pieces of a life not lived.

Richie rolls over onto his back and thinks about the last time he brushed his teeth. Eddie would hate that he has to think about it at all. He feels tears building in the back of his eyes and closes them to stop them from falling.

“Richie, it’s me.”

Mike.

The way he raps his knuckles against the door is soft, an attempt to be unobtrusive. Nothing like Bill was yesterday.

Richie pushes himself up, keeps his eyes closed, then draws one knee up and rests his forehead against it. He could just keep laying there. Eventually, Mike would walk away. Bill had.

“If you don't want to talk or anything, that's absolutely fine. Just let us know you're okay, Richie.”

How is he ever supposed to be okay? How could they expect that of him? That's not a fair thing to ask him to be.

With more effort than it should take, Richie forces himself out of bed and ignores how the covers fall to the floor behind him. He leans on the wall next to the door for a long moment, then reaches out and opens it just enough to look through.

“I’m alive. You can all stop pretending to worry now,” he tells Mike. His voice is hoarse, and he struggles to remember the last time he drank something. Probably the Pepsi. He really should have brushed his teeth.

Mike’s eyes are soft as he talks.

“We aren't pretending to worry. We _are_ worried.”

It’s almost convincing.

“Sure,” Richie says. It’s not worth energy he doesn't have to argue about this. “Good talk. Bye, Mike.”

Richie moves to close the door, but Mike shoots a hand out and stops it. He levels Richie with a look that to Richie reads like he's already getting tired of him avoiding the topic.

“You can't keep hiding yourself away. It's not healthy,” Mike says, his voice carefully gentle.

Maybe he sees Richie as the same as the clown: a puzzle he needs to solve, a problem he needs to say the right words to to get it to go away. Good fucking luck.

“Because it's healthier to pretend shit never happened, right?”

“That's not—”

“Healthier to just sit around and go _‘Good game, team!’_ when Stan killed himself and Eddie’s rotting down there in the sewers. Healthier to just ignore fucking everything bad that happened.”

“Richie, don't—”

“Don't what? Talk about that? I thought it was healthy to talk about my feelings? Or did you all not fucking care? You don't fucking care what I’m feeling, you just want me better again so you can all stop feeling guilty about how fast you all were to just fucking forget about him.”

“Rich—”

“Just fuck off! Okay? Just go! It doesn't fucking matter how I feel because he's fucking dead and I— and, and nobody fucking cares, Mike. Just… go. Alright? Get out of Derry, go live your happily ever after or whatever, you deserve it. But I’m done with it.”

Richie closes the door on Mike and this time Mike doesn't move to stop it.

Richie presses his back flat to the wall and sinks to the floor. At some point, he’d started crying. Once he gets started, it's too hard to stop. So he doesn't try to stop it. Richie sits on the ground and lets himself cry.

The other Losers don't try knocking on his door again.

Eddie sits next to him, tries to imagine the pressure of the wall at his back so he can take comfort in it. _You loved me,_ he thinks to himself. _I loved you too._

He imagines their shoulders brushing, and takes comfort in that too.

After a week, Richie leaves the townhouse.

Before going, he sorts through Eddie's luggage. At the bottom of one of the larger cases, he finds an off-grey hoodie and wonders when Eddie would have worn it. Is it something he felt comfortable in? Or just something to keep him warm on his morning runs?

Richie doesn't know. He will never know.

He slips it on over a clean shirt, then sits there on his knees in front if the meticulously packed suitcases for a long time.

Eventually, he stands. He pockets a penknife and his keys from his room – ignores the phone he deliberately has not put on charge yet – and leaves through the front door.

The only other car in the parking lot is Bill’s.

Everyone else has moved on.

Richie drives himself in broken glasses to pick up his new prescription pair, then he drives himself to the Kissing Bridge. He parks, leans back against the shut car door, and looks for it.

It’s not hard to find. He carved it pretty big. Way to go, little Richie.

Penknife in hand, he retraces the worn lines of the letters, removes 27 years of whatever builds up in the cracks of a wooden fence. Reaffirms old affirmations. Finds himself smiling down at them, misty eyed, as he remembers a hundred things about carving them and about Eddie.

He stops smiling, leans his forehead against the carving, and cries.

Eddie is relieved when Richie eventually drives himself back to the townhouse. The carving was sweet – he can see himself at thirteen being unbelievably charmed by it but refusing to let it show. But ever since they left the hotel room, Eddie had been eyeing the penknife.

He's just glad Richie doesn't decide to do anything stupid with it.

When Richie gets back, Bill is waiting for him at the reception desk. He’s leant up against it, casual, like he's trying to act like this isn't an ambush. As soon as Richie is through the doors, Bill talks.

“I got us plane tickets back to LA.”

Richie pauses, then sighs.

“No, you didn't Bill. You brought yourself two seats on a plane back to LA. Pretty selfish of you to take up two whole seats, asshole.”

“Richie,” voice firm now, trying to invoke his old leader status, “you can’t just stay here.”

“Sure I can. Mike stayed and he turned out fine.”

“You have a life back in LA, you can’t just abandon it.”

“I have fuck all back in LA, Bill. I have a ghost writer, an agent who hates me, and an empty apartment that's too big. There’s nothing for me there.”

Richie makes to move towards the stairs, escape this god awful confrontation, but Bill moves – throws a whole arm out – to block his way. Richie stares down at him as Bill glares up.

“There's nothing for you here either.”

“Don't be fucking dense, man.”

“You have to move on.”

“And it's been a fucking week! A week! And you were all badgering me to get over it after three fucking days. Eddie is dead, Bill, and I left him down there. Give me some god damn time to grieve. You had thirty fucking years to grieve Georgie.”

With that, Richie pushes past him. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of Eddie’s hoodie, he ducks his head low and leaves Bill by the foot of the stairs.

The next day, Bill's car is gone too. Richie is the only one left behind.

Richie blames five people for Eddie's death.

He blames Mike for bringing them all back to this shit hole and lying to them about a ritual that he knew wouldn't work. Without him, Eddie wouldn't have come to Derry.

He blames Bill for shouting at Eddie in the Neibolt house, making him feel ashamed of being afraid, driving home every lesson Eddie’s Mom had ever tried to teach him and making Eddie feel like he had to prove he was brave later on. Without him, Eddie wouldn't have tried to save Richie from the deadlights.

He blames Bev for handing Eddie that stupid broken off piece of fence, telling him a lie so he would throw it, for connecting belief to a fence post but not putting the pieces together early enough that it wouldn't have to be thrown. Without her, Eddie wouldn't have had anything to throw at Pennywise.

He blames Ben for not helping him carry Eddie out of the lair, when Richie knows full well that he and Ben could have easily carried Eddie together, could have got him out. Without him… well, Richie still wouldn't have been able to pull Eddie out, but he'd only have himself to blame.

Speaking of.

Last, but not least, Richie blames himself.

This is not new. Richie blames himself for a lot of things. For telling Eddie he's braver than he thinks, encouraging him to go down there. For getting caught in the deadlights in the first place. For not kissing him when he had the chance.

Most of all, he blames himself for not rolling, because he saw Eddie’s death before it happened and all he did was stare up at the man on top of him in numb shock. Pennywise tortured him with it, and then It followed through.

And Richie could have stopped it if he'd have just fucking rolled out the way.

Sometimes, he'll lay awake in the townhouse and press his eyes closed as tight as he can and think to himself _I’m still in the deadlights, this isn't real, I can just wake up from them and do it again, I can save him this time, I can roll us to the side and he'll live_.

It never works.

Whenever he wakes up, all Richie sees is that same yellowing spot of the wallpaper near the baseboard on the left side of the bed.

And Eddie, laying to the right of him every time he does this, remains unseen too.

And Eddie?

The only thing he would blame for his death is that asshole fucking clown.

Richie moves out of the townhouse.

To be fair, he was getting the feeling nobody actually worked there anymore. He’s not entirely sure about the legality of staying in an abandoned hotel, and he’s not about to take his chances with it. Besides, he really needs somewhere with an actual kitchen.

So he rents a little place in the suburbs of Derry. It is, frankly, disgustingly cheap. Top ranking murder town in the country and being in the middle of fucking nowhere will do that to rent prices. Nobody wants to be in Derry. The person he rents it from seems relieved to have anyone moving in at all.

It's dusty, pretty small, and the décor screams that it was last renovated in the 1990s. But for now, it's home.

Eddie follows him as he steps through the house. Takes it in. Ignores the little ways it reminds him of his own childhood home.

He doesn't miss how Richie has brought Eddie's luggage with him. It all goes in the spare bedroom. Richie hauls all three suitcases (and the washbag) up the stairs and lays them flat, side by side, on the floor next to the unmade bed. Periodically, Richie will sit on the floor next to them. Sometimes, he'll steal another oversized hoodie.

Eddie remembers packing them. Remembers trying to fit every item of clothing, every important object he owned, an entire life into three large suitcases and a washbag. Because he wasn't going to go back to New York after Derry. He didn't entirely know it then, but that first night at the Jade he’d known why he’d been in such a frenzy trying to get everything to fit. He’d been planning on going wherever Richie went.

Well, it worked out like that in the end anyway.

Even dead, Eddie continues to follow Richie wherever he goes. Right now, it's sitting on an unmade bed in a house he doesn't know, no weight to affect the mattress, watching as Richie quietly cries to an audience of his clothes. Clothes and Richie both pieces of himself that Eddie has left behind.

A month after Eddie's death, Richie finally charges his phone.

The stream of notifications as it boots up is so overwhelming that Richie puts his phone to the side and waits another day just to read them. Thankfully, whoever he has the 74 missed calls from gave up calling at some point, because another one doesn't come through until he's ready to go through it all.

They're mostly from Steve, his agent. A couple are from his Mom. There's three from Mike, two from Bev, and the most recent is three days ago from Ben. He doesn't call any of them back. He dismisses the notifications and moves on to texts.

He doesn't read the tirade he knows he got from Steve. Simply texts him that he's quitting, that Steve is fired, and ignores the 7 calls Steve makes afterwards.

_Fuck you, Tozier. Answer the fucking phone._

Richie does not answer the phone. Richie blocks Steve’s number.

Going through the rest of his texts, he discovers he's been added to a group with the rest of the Losers. They seem to be pretty active in it, sending little updates to each other everyday. Small notes like _‘still remember you all!’_ , or pictures of what they're doing. Mike is in Florida. Good for him. Bev and Ben seem to be sailing on a yacht. Fuck knows what Bill is doing.

Richie removes himself from the group.

Eddie watches as Richie isolates himself.

He only leaves the house when he absolutely has to, usually to buy something – be it food or toothpaste or bedsheets. Sometimes, he’ll sit on the front porch and smoke a cigarette as he stares at the centre of the road. He’ll stay still, eyes unfocused, for a long time. And then he'll flick the cigarette butt into the overgrown grass of the front lawn and go back inside the house.

Eddie suffers through more bad Netflix shows than he ever thought he would in his life. He’s forced to endure. He can't exactly go anywhere else.

Richie sets his laptop up on the dented coffee table in lieu of a television and turns the bad sound up as far as it will go. Then, he sits back on the couch and bundles himself into a blanket he brought the last time he went shopping. It is mustard yellow and Eddie _hates_ the sight of it. Once bundled, Richie will sit and watch whatever Netflix show he settles on until a message pops up to ask if he's still watching.

Eddie realises six episodes into _The Good Place_ that Richie probably isn't really watching at all. He’s just putting things on for the sounds and pictures to keep him company.

Richie will also make Spotify playlists with songs on them that Eddie knows he knows will make him sad. Nobody in their right mind listens to Cutting Crew’s _Died In Your Arms_ with the intention of feeling better. Eddie knows this. Eddie knows Richie knows this. And yet Richie continues to add sad songs to the playlist, and he continues to listen to it.

And through it all – the junk food, the bad Netflix series, the stupid Spotify playlist – Richie ignores every single call and text that comes through from the remaining Losers.

Eddie watches as every time Richie gets re-added to the groupchat, he removes himself from it. He only ever stops short of actually blocking their numbers, something stopping him as his thumb hovers over the button on the fingerprint smeared screen of his phone.

Still, he showers, he brushes his teeth, and he changes his sheets weekly.

Eddie doesn't know why. They never struck him as very Richie things to do.

“Give me Patty’s number.”

Richie says this into his phone at 11pm on a Tuesday night. On the other end of the line, Beverly sighs.

“Why?”

“She’ll understand.”

“Richie,” she says, voice unbelievably soft, “ _we_ understand.”

“She's grieving too.”

“So are we.”

“No you're _not_. You're having the time of your life getting boned down on a fucking boat. Give me Patty’s number.”

Beverly doesn't reply for a long time. Richie bites at his fingernails through the silence on the line, then stops once the thought of Eddie criticising the amount of dirt that’s probably under them worms its way into his mind. It’s been happening more lately. Little things, everyday things, reminding him of Eddie or illuminating some hidden memory he hadn't known he'd lost. He can’t decide if he likes it or not, the act of remembering.

“I don't have it. I’ll tell Mike to text it to you.”

Richie breathes out pure relief.

“Thank you, Bev.”

“Yeah, don't mention it. Just…”

“Yeah?”

“Look after yourself, Richie.”

She hangs up. Fifteen minutes later, Mike texts him a number and then follows it up with a long wall of text. Richie scrolls up to the number and clicks on it.

Richie looks at the digits, sat in the text bar on his phone, and then he looks at the time. It would be selfish to call her this late, wouldn't it? But maybe she's up too. Maybe she's pushing people away too. She'll understand, because he understands. It hurts to lose someone you love.

He dials. She picks up nearly immediately.

“Hello.”

“Hi, uh, is this Patty?”

“Yes? Sorry, excuse me, who is this?”

“Sorry, I know this is a really weird call to be getting, especially this late at night. I’m uh, I’m Richie Tozier. I grew up with Stan.”

“Oh. Oh, um, hello Richie.”

“Hello, Mrs Blum-Uris.”

She chuckles at that.

“Patty, please.”

“Of course.”

“So, Richie, why are you calling?”

Richie swallows.

“I don't… really know? No, that's a bad answer. I uh, I knew Stan and I heard what happened – I was there when you were talking to Bev about, shit, like a month ago now? And you just, you sounded so fucking sad. I mean, of course you were, the love of your life died, right? And I, um… stuff happened, after that, and I just. I think I know, a bit, what you're going through. Love of your life dying and everything. So I… wanted to reach out, I think.”

“I… that's a lot to take in.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No, no, I – it's nice to hear from you, Richie. I’m sorry you lost someone too.”

Richie bites down hard on his lip and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling, blinking rapidly.

“Yeah,” his voice cracks, “Yeah, it's nice to meet you too, Pats.”

“Oh, Pats? We’re moving awfully fast, Rich.”

Richie laughs, the sound wet. He rubs his eyes with the sleeve of a hoodie he thinks he stole from one of Eddie’s suitcases and sniffs.

“Don't think I’m quite ready to move on yet, Pats.”

“Yeah. Neither do I.”

Richie swallows, wipes at his eyes again. He draws his knees up to his chest and rests his forehead against them.

“So, I’ve got some _very_ embarrassing stories about Stan that I’m sure you’d love to hear.”

Richie hears the sound of shuffling fabric over the line. The sounds of Patty getting comfortable.

“I knew him since college. I’m sure I have you beat for embarrassing stories.”

“Yeah, Blum-Uris?”

“Yes, Tozier.”

“Prove it.”

They share stories about Stan long into the early hours of the morning. Patty is delighted to hear about the antics her late husband got up to in childhood, absolutely thrilled at the story Richie tells about Stan’s bar-mitzvah, giggling the whole time.

In return, Patty graces Richie with a tale of Stan getting blackout drunk for the first and only time off fruity cocktails. Of the time he twisted his ankle when birdwatching and how Patty had to help him limp five miles back through the trail they’d walked. Her voice goes soft as she tells Richie about the field journal he kept, how he’d sketch the birds they saw, how he’d sketch her sometimes.

As the sun seeps through the curtains, Patty yawns down the line. Richie winces at the time and apologises for keeping her up too late.

“No, no, don't apologise. It was nice to be able to talk about him with someone who knew him too.”

“Good. I’m glad, Patty.”

“Can I call you again tomorrow, Richie?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

“Okay, see you then. Sleep well.”

“You too, Pats.”

They end the call. Richie leans back on the bed and falls asleep as light creeps across the room.

As he closes his eyes, he thinks that maybe he sees someone stood in shadow, backlit by a rising sun.

Richie ignores phone calls and texts from everyone except Patty. If Beverly or Ben or Mike call, he will simply let it ring out. If Bill calls, he'll decline it. If Patty calls, Richie picks up within the first couple of rings.

“I keep finding myself going through our photo albums,” Patty tells him, late one night. “He always liked real film, so I got all the remaining reels developed and I’ve just been… looking at them.”

“Sounds like Stan didn't end up being a fan of Facebook.”

Patty chuckles.

“I’d say he was an old soul, but I think he was always more of an old man.”

Richie smiles at that.

“You're right, he was definitely born old. He just grew into it."

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“You and your man?”

Richie doesn't quite know how he feels about it being phrased like that. It makes his stomach twist in an oddly familiar way at the same time it makes him clammy at the back of his neck. Then, he comes to a realisation.

“I don't have any pictures of him.”

“Not even on Facebook?”

“I don't,” Richie's hands are shaking. He pushes himself up in bed, where he usually ends up for calls with Patty, and grabs for his laptop where he’d abandoned it on the carpet from where he was binge watching _Gilmore Girls_. “I don't think so. Fuck. Shit.”

“Hey, hey, Richie, calm down,” she tells him.

Richie taps in his password and opens Facebook on his laptop. He types Eddie's name into the search bar and browses the results.

There he is. Edward F Kaspbrak, Risk Analyst in New York. His profile picture is a bust, probably the same one he used for his passport and driver's license photos. When Richie clicks on the profile, the header image is blank and the profile is set to private. Facebook tells him to send a friend request.

He must make a noise of some sort, because Patty says, “Tell me what’s happening, Richie.”

“His Facebook is private,” Richie tells her. His eyes are on the straight line of Eddie's mouth in his profile picture. The creases under his eyes and the low slope of his eyebrows. “I can't see if he uploaded anything.”

“Oh, Richie.”

“He can't accept my friend request,” Richie says, slightly manic, trying to say it like a joke but there's a strain in his voice that he knows means he's going to start crying.

“Close your eyes.”

Richie does without question, fingers squeezing around the phone.

“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.”

Richie does, breath hitching, and then he does it again, and again, until Patty says to stop.

“Tell me about him.”

Richie does. There's a lot to tell, and it's hard to find a place to start, but once he gets going he finds it’s hard to stop.

Patty listens to it all, lets him talk as much as he wants for as long as he wants. She contributes little comments, makes noises so Richie knows she's listening, following everything he says.

He talks for a couple of hours, he thinks. Stories about Eddie, stupid things he and Eddie did together, filled with little, inconsequential details that he finds himself smiling at. Through it all, he keeps his eyes closed. Every story he relays to Patty plays in vivid detail behind his eyelids.

"You won't forget him just because you don't have pictures," Patty tells him once he's done. "He lives in you now."

"Yeah," Richie says, rubbing away dried tears with his sleeve. "Yeah, you're right. Thank you."

Richie is preparing for something and Eddie doesn't know what. He goes to hardware stores, buys tools in a variety that worries Eddie immensely. There's a thought there, in the back of his mind, that Eddie doesn't want to entertain. It tells him that Richie is going to go get Eddie's body. Go save him.

But he can't save him. Eddie doubts he'd even be able to bring his body back up. It's been nearly two months, and Eddie's body has been laying somewhere stagnant and damp and surrounded by dirt.

When he sees Richie researching cave diving, Eddie knows what's he's going to do. There's nothing that Eddie can do to stop him. But Eddie doesn't want to see himself like that, rotting and undone. So when Richie goes back to Neibolt, Eddie – for once – does not follow.

Richie can't find a way in through the house.

Richie does, however, find a way in through the sewers. In the end, the path back down to the cistern isn't too hard to navigate. It's a tight squeeze in a lot of places, but he only needs to force rocks out of the way a couple of times. Mostly, he finds a way to shimmy himself through the gaps that have been left in the wake of It’s destruction.

Eddie’s body is right where they left it.

It is not _how_ they left it.

_At this stage, the tissues begin to liquefy and the skin will start to blacken,_ Wikipedia informs Richie on the topic of Active Decay once he stumbles his way home. _Blowflies target decomposing corpses early on, using specialised smell receptors, and lay their eggs in orifices and open wounds._

Richie showers for a long time, scrubs his skin until it's red and raw, bleeding fresh from the scrapes he got for squeezing himself into spaces where he did not belong.

In his mind, Richie thinks he’d had some image of hauling Eddie’s body victoriously to the surface. Maybe he'd bury him somewhere Eddie would like, somewhere nice. If he couldn't carry him, maybe he'd kiss him on a pale forehead and pull the jacket he’d left behind over his body to give him some peace in the afterlife. Just like they do in the movies.

But Richie hadn't been able to do that. In the end, the jacket had been rotting too.


	2. what we discover along the way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie and Patty bond. The other Losers continue to be unhelpful. Eddie makes himself known. Rituals are researched and attempted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy! Chapter got long and I realised stuff would flow better if I split it into two. The next chapter will deal with Eddie (and Stan!) coming back.

Sometimes, Richie will dream of Eddie.

Mostly, it's just a beat-for-beat re-enactment of events, a playback of recently unearthed memories. Moments for him to renew and relive. The memories are nice – bittersweet, but familiar. He’ll wake up from them with a warmth spilt beneath his chest, an indescribable fondness. It's good while it lasts, in those sleep hazed minutes before he realises where he is. Remembers what has happened. Richie tries very hard not to let the present sour sweet moments from the past.

The repetitions are not as welcome; Richie wishes he could barricade himself against them, but your mind doesn't obey the walls you build within it. He’ll find himself back in the cistern and he’ll know immediately that it's not real, that he's having a nightmare, but he won't be able to wake himself up. Every single time, he tries to do things differently, tries to make different choices. Every single time, it ends the same way, no matter what he does. Richie, flat on his back; Eddie, skewered above him. Red.

He wakes from sleep, breath hitching, crying, and quickly pushes himself out of bed to find a way to take his mind off of it.

Very rarely, Richie will find himself nowhere at all.

He will close his eyes, and when he drifts off he will find himself in a void. Distantly, he will be aware of a presence far greater than himself looming. He will be unable to see it, but will be struck through with the knowledge that it can see him. It is watching. The knowledge doesn't unnerve him quite as much as he thinks it should.

When he's in this space, Eddie will appear to him too. Off-white shirt, black hoodie, straight cut jeans; the outfit he wore into the sewers but with none of the gory embellishments. Eddie is new here, not manufactured from existing memories.

“Richie,” he’ll breathe, and reach his hands up before stopping just short of touching Richie’s face. Stopping himself.

Richie will reach out, curl shaking hands around Eddie's and guide them the rest of the way, stepping into Eddie's space in turn. This is a dream, there's no harm in being indulgent.

“Eds.”

“Oh,” Eddie will say, awed, eyes flickering between Richie's cheeks and his hands on them, covered by Richie's hands in turn. “I can feel that.”

Richie won't know what that means, but he'll smile at Eddie anyway.

“You come here often?”

Eddie will laugh, then. Eddie will laugh a lot at what Richie says in this space, will take any spare moment he has to smile at him. “God, no. About as much as you, I imagine.”

“I’ve gotta start coming here more then.”

Eddie will lean their foreheads together, press their bodies close, and Richie will try his best to burn the imagined sensation of it into his mind. Into the space between them, Eddie will breathe, “Maybe you do.”

Something larger than them watches and says nothing at all. It is allowing them to exist here, and for some reason that seems generous.

They don't meet here often. Yet every time, Eddie tells him, “Look after yourself better, moron.”

And Richie will wake up, phantom warmth on his cheeks, and wonder why those dreams feel more real than the others. He tries to do what Eddie tells him to.

“I keep dreaming of him,” Richie tells Patty late one night. Both of their sleep schedules are horrible at this point - it's hard to sleep when you're grieving. Patty says the hardest part is getting used to the empty space, the feeling of wanting to say something but nobody being there. Twenty-seven years and Richie doesn't think he ever got used to that feeling.

“I get that,” Patty says. Richie hears the metal-on-metal sound of her stirring a pot. They've both got bad at taking care of themselves, so they're calling while they cook the same recipes: shakshuka and chocolate babka.

“You using a non-stick pan?” Richie asks.

“They do _non_ -non-stick pans now?”

“Sticky pans?”

Patty chuckles. “No, I am not using a sticky pan.”

“You shouldn't stir with a metal spoon then, it messes up the coating,” Richie tells her, then wonders why it sounds familiar. “Man, I think I just channelled him.”

“Eddie?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Richie sighs. “Though I bet he thought Teflon causes cancer or some dumb shit his mom used to tell him.”

“Stan used to think cast iron was the only way to go,” Patty tells him. “I’ve been too scared to touch his cast iron frying pan because I’m afraid I’m going to ruin it somehow.”

“Gotta be a tutorial out there somewhere.”

“Hmm,” Patty hums. “But I kind of want it to stay the same. Like if I touch it I’m disturbing it. It can't change if I don't touch it, you know?”

Richie thinks of the suitcases gathering dust in the spare room. “No, yeah, I get that.”

“How long has the babka been proving?”

“Uhhh,” Richie fumbles with his phone, tries to ignore the clock telling him it's 3:46AM, and navigates to the series of alarms he's set for everything cooking. “Thirty, so about ten minutes to go.”

“So this is the second prove—”

“Mhm.”

“Then we bake it for forty-five minutes.”

“Yup. Ready to crack some eggs?”

“Sure am,” Patty says. There's a pause as they both make their wells in the tomato sauce and crack their eggs into them. “What are your Eddie dreams about?”

“You can't hear it but I’m wiggling my eyebrows.”

“Of course.”

Richie sighs and forces himself to be vulnerable. “Mainly just a replay of memories. Either just happy stuff like, kinda really sweet childhood stuff actually. Or it's, uh…”

“What happened?” Patty ventures.

“Yeah.”

“And what you could have done to change it,” Patty sounds distant. “But no matter how it goes differently, the outcome is still the same.”

Richie swallows. “Yeah.”

The alarm for the babka beeps. Richie turns it off, then sets a new one for the cooking times.

“Let's get these eggs in the oven, and the babka.”

Richie puts his phone down on the countertop and does just that, swearing under his breath as he burns himself putting the skillet on the bottom shelf. The babka goes on the middle shelf above it, and he's left wondering if they should whip up some cookies just to have something to fill the top shelf. It looks empty all on its own.

God, he's projecting onto an oven rack.

Richie closes the door and picks up his phone.

“Hey, Pats?”

“Run your hand under cold water, I heard you burn it.”

Richie sighs and does as he's told. “Hey, Pats?”

“Yes, Richie.”

“Do you ever dream of this um, this huge blank space? Like, it's empty and dark but you just _know_ it goes on forever. And there's something there watching you.”

“And then Stan is there,” Patty breathes. “And it feels like I’m actually talking to him.”

“Instead of just reliving stuff, yeah,” Richie leans back against the countertop and ducks his head down, talking quiet and close to the phone, whispering secrets like there's someone else there to hear him. “For me it's Eddie. He told me to look after myself.”

Patty laughs at that. “Yeah, Stan said the same. And here we are.”

“And here we are,” Richie confirms. “I um, I’m trying to convince myself it's not like, y’know... _actually_ him there. Because if I start believing in ghosts, I think that might be the thing that makes me actually pay for a therapist.”

“Nothing wrong with a little spirituality,” Patty hedges.

“It's not them,” Richie says, more for his sake.

“Maybe not,” Patty sighs, “but it's nice to think, just for a while, that it is.”

As usual, Patty is right. It is nice to believe in something.

Eddie watches from the neglected dining room table. He's been holding out hope that Richie will dust before he sits down to eat, but he should learn not to hope for things that involve Richie and cleaning in the same thought. Maybe he can tell him the next time he sees him in a dream, maybe he'll actually listen then. It seems to have worked for looking after himself, it could work for cleaning too.

Richie seems to be equally opposed to both things. Richie seems to be willing to do things for Eddie's sake, even an Eddie he doesn't believe is real.

It's while watching the bathroom mirror fog as Richie runs himself a bath that Eddie starts to think. It's a classic, isn't it? Ghosts leaving messages on a foggy mirror. Eddie hesitates, then reaches out a hand.

He draws an outstretched finger across the surface, and tries not to be disappointed when it remains exactly the same.

But that's kind of what he expected, isn't it? He hasn't been able to do a damn thing since dying. He hasn't been able to touch anyone since he first woke up in the cistern, unable to feel Richie's hands, overlaid atop his own corpse.

_If you believe it does._

So maybe he just needs to really believe he’ll be able to do it, really believe he'll be able to affect his surroundings. He is here, and he is going to show Richie that he's here.

Eddie reaches out again, and tries his very best to believe in it.

When he draws his finger back, it feels wet. When he looks at the mirror, there's a line cutting through the fog. He draws three more, joining them together, and looks at them like he's never written anything before.

He really just did that.

Thirty minutes later, while Richie is drying his hair, he sees something out of the corner of his eye. Lowering the towel and letting it rest around his shoulders, he turns towards the mirror, and pauses for a long time.

Clear as day, right there, is the letter _E_.

“Eddie,” Richie breathes. Then he turns, like if he does so fast enough he'll be able to catch a ghost off-guard. “Eddie?”

The room is silent as Richie stands there, still and holding his breath. If he breathes, he might miss something; if he moves, he might disturb something.

Then the moment passes.

Nothing changes, and Richie sighs. He raises the towel over his head again, and continues drying his hair.

And through it all, Eddie screams at him, screams and shouts and tries to touch him, wears himself out of the breath he doesn't need and doesn't have, shouting:

“I’m here! Richie, I’m fucking here! Fucking _see_ me, you dumb shit! Open your god damn eyes, _I’m fucking here!_ ”

He slams his hand against the wall, slaps it against wet tile, and it makes no noise. The silence just makes him angrier. He smacks the wall, open palmed, again and again, as hard as he can, because he knows now that it won't hurt. He can't hurt himself from punching things. Not anymore. He's not afraid of hurting anymore because he's fucking dead.

Eddie sees the E in the mirror again and feels the fury bubbling deep down within him. This is another classic too, isn't it? Punching a mirror? Might as well work all the tropes out of his system.

When he brings his fist down, the mirror fractures under it. A loud crack rings out, and Eddie stares at it in shock.

Richie turns, sees the spider web splintering across the mirror’s surface, and freezes.

“Holy shit. Eddie.”

So.

Maybe Richie goes down a bit of a rabbit hole.

He researches ghosts for twelve hours straight. He misses his call with Patty. He forgets to cook, and eats the cup ramen he brought three weeks ago in front of the cool ambient light of his laptop screen. It’s easy to click from one Wikipedia article to the next, to open the litany of sources listed at the bottom of each page in new tabs of his browser. At some point, he opens a word document and starts to copy and paste any information he thinks could be relevant.

At 6AM, he gives in and calls Mike.

“Richie?” Mike’s voice is muffled, like he just woke up. There's a shuffle of fabric, then he comes through clearer. “Are you okay? We haven't heard from you in—”

“Rituals,” Richie interrupts. “Um, I’ve been looking into rituals and stuff. I have no idea what I’m doing—”

Mike sighs. Gently, he says, “Richie, look.”

“I need you to tell me if there are any rituals to bring him back,” Richie continues, “because I’m pretty fucking certain he's haunting me right now.”

Mike stays silent for a long time after that. Another shuffle of fabric, and a door closing as Mike moves from one room to another.

“Richie,” he says, voice level and very careful, “I think you need to talk to someone about this.”

“That's why I called you, you know about the rituals and stuff.”

“No, I mean like a _therapist_ , Richie.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Mike, he broke my fucking mirror. He. Is. Haunting me.”

“You're not being haunted.”

“My mirror. Broke it!”

“A therapist would really help with the grieving process. It's been a long time now—”

Richie groans and throws his free hand up into the air.

“Look, just tell me if there's a way I can bring him back or just—just fucking talk to him, _anything_ , I just want,” Richie rubs a hand over his face and scrunches his eyes shut, because if he doesn't he knows he'll cry, “I just want to see him again, Mike.”

“I know, Rich,” Mike says, voice unbelievably calm, “but he's dead.”

“Cool, good talk. Bye, Mike.”

And then he hangs up.

Mike tries to text him afterwards, but gives up much quicker than the first time Richie pushed him away. He must not even tell the other Losers, because Richie doesn't get a text from any of them while he's doing his research. He doesn't sleep, but he answers his call from Patty because she hasn't done anything wrong. He promises her that he'll eat something, and he does. He reminds her to drink some water, and she does.

After that, Richie makes coffee and goes back to his laptop.

It comes as a relief to Eddie when Richie finally crashes on the couch, laptop teetering precariously on his chest as he breathes steadily in and out. He's wrapped in a yellow throw, and he's still wearing one of Eddie's hoodies. It's the NYU hoodie Eddie got in his first year of University, and had deliberately brought three sizes too big so he could wrap himself up in it against the chill of the New York winter. He'd vastly underestimated how much colder New York managed to be than Maine.

The hoodie that once swamped him sits just slightly too tight around Richie's shoulders, the faded logo stretched taut across his wide chest.

Eddie tries not to think about it. Instead, he sits on the floor next to the couch and closes his eyes, focusing as hard as he can on the blank space, on Richie, on a place where they can be together.

Then he's there.

Richie is too. Eddie sees him, staring off over a ledge, straight forward into the endless dark. It's strange for them to be stood on something; it's smooth, patterned in large stretching spirals contained within what look like massive stones. It slopes slightly down to where Richie stands at the edge. Eddie want to lean down and touch the surface, to investigate, but he wants to talk to Richie more.

“Hey, dickhead!”

Richie turns as Eddie stomps his way over to him, one hand on his hip and the other ready to gesture. But then Richie's face melts into a wide, hopelessly fond smile and Eddie's anger stutters.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

Richie opens his arms and Eddie uses his existing momentum to launch himself into them. He lets himself be enveloped, allows himself to revel in the commodity of touch. Hair tickles his neck as Richie tucks his face down against Eddie's shoulder. Richie squeezes his arms tighter around him as Eddie brings his own up to return the embrace just as fiercely. Under his palms, Eddie feels Richie's shoulders begin to shake.

“You're real, aren't you. This you, here?”

“Yeah,” Eddie replies, “Yeah, I think so.”

Richie chuckles wetly. “You think so?”

“Well, you know. You think therefore you are, right?” Eddie feels Richie shaking for a different reason, quiet laughter vibrating against the skin of Eddie's neck. “Shut the fuck up, dude. Being a ghost is hard.”

“I can imagine.”

“Especially when you’re doing dumb shit and I have to watch you just—" Eddie breathes in, circles his arms even tighter, tries to bring Richie impossibly closer to him. “I can't do shit when you're there, miserable every fucking day and—”

“I know. You're here now,” Richie tells him. Smiles against his neck, then says, “You broke my mirror.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that,” Eddie says, not sorry at all.

“Gonna lose my deposit. Didn't know you had it in you.”

Eddie grins, “Shut the fuck up.”

And Richie does. They stand there, for a long time, just holding one another. Richie is the first to pull back. He brings his hands up to rest on either side of Eddie's neck and just looks at him. Takes him in. Eddie isn't quite sure what he's thinking, so he moves one hand from Richie's waist and curls it around Richie's wrist. He smooths his thumb in small circles over the pulse point and looks right back at him.

Richie breathes in, looks away, breathes out, and looks back at Eddie, eyes flicking from one feature of his face to another.

“You, uh. You know. Right?”

“Know what?”

“That I, you know,” Richie's fingers twitch.

Eddie reaches out his hand and cups it over Richie's cheek. When Eddie moves forwards, Richie's hands on his neck urge him closer.

“Know that you love me?” Eddie asks.

“Know that I love you,” Richie confirms, voice wavering.

_He's scared,_ Eddie realises, all at once. _He's been scared for a very long time._

So Eddie kisses him. Lips solid and soft. Closes his eyes and presses his body close to Richie's again, and Richie pulls him closer in turn. When Eddie pulls away, he watches Richie's eyelashes flutter. Fondness drives him to place another kiss at the corner of Richie's mouth.

“I love you too,” Eddie tells him, because sometimes these things aren't very obvious to Richie.

Richie presses their foreheads together, and for a moment they're quiet, breathing the same air.

“I’m going to get you back,” Richie promises him.

“I know,” Eddie says. “But for the love of god, look after yourself. You're driving me fucking insane and I’m, I’m not there to, to look after—”

Richie kisses him this time, and Eddie lets him.

“I’ll try,” Richie says as he pulls back. “You can break another mirror if I don't.”

“I’ll break you,” Eddie returns, nonsensically. “Kiss me again, asshole.”

And Richie does.

_“This is fucking stupid,”_ Richie thinks to himself as he opens the box.

_“This is fucking stupid,”_ Eddie thinks as he watches him do it.

Richie has dusted the dining room table for the first time since he moved into this house. It's a little four-seated circular affair, sat out of the way, nestled into the space between the open plan living room and kitchen. Sat in one of the seats, Richie sets up what he'd ordered online a week previously.

He unwraps the Ouija board and places it in the centre of the table. On top of it, he rests the planchette.

Then he laughs at himself, and runs a hand down his face.

There's no way in hell this is going to work.

It doesn't work.

They sit at that dining table for hours, trying over and over again. Eddie puts all of himself into it, channels every ounce of energy that he has, and nothing happens. They pour over every set of instructions Richie can find on the internet, each webpage pulled up on the screen of his phone. Eddie reads them over his shoulder, never leaning in too close lest he pass through Richie's body and remind himself of what he lacks.

They come out the other side with nothing to show for it. The planchette hasn't moved from its spot at the centre of the board any more than can be accounted for by the twitch of Richie's anxious fingers.

Eddie looks over at him, sat hunched over in his chair, palms pressed flat against his forehead.

_"This is harder for him_ _,"_ Eddie thinks. _"He can't see how hard you're trying, but you can see him."_

Of course Richie has never been able to see him. It's obvious, but Eddie has never really thought of the prolonged impact that could have before. Richie must feel like he's going insane, must be doubting if he ever saw anything after all. If Eddie can't trust his own body to do what he wants it too, then Richie must be in the same position with his own mind.

All at once, Richie lets out a long breath. He straightens his body out: shoulders up and back, arms away from his torso, open. Show posture.

"Alright," he says, smiling a few inches to the left of where he doesn't know Eddie sits. Eddie wonders what he imagines sat there, if he's imagining Eddie's reactions. "Let's give it one last shot, yeah?"

Two fingers from each hand resting on the wide edge of the planchette, Richie looks down at the open circle to read where the letter will show.

"Eds, baby, are you here?"

_"Yes,"_ Eddie thinks, _"of course I'm here, I've been here from the start. I just wish--"_

And what does he wish, exactly? It's complicated.

So he channels that wish, reaches his hands out past the planchette and rests them atop Richie's outstretched fingers.

They don't pass through.

Instead, they meet soft skin and Eddie revels in it. He presses his palms down, pushes forwards, curls his fingers around each of Richie's wrists and squeezes. He watches, attentive, as Richie gasps at the sensation, eyes going wide and staring down at his own hands. Trying to see something that's not there.

Eddie guides Richie and the planchette over to the 'yes' printed on the board. He doesn't think he'll be able to do much more than that, so he uses the lingering energy of whatever this is to hold Richie for as long as he can.

At some point, Richie turns his hands so they're resting together palm-to-palm. He uses the extra length of his fingers to brush all the way up Eddie's wrists, then settles the tips at where the pulse point should be. Eddie wonders what he feels. Not just the pulse, or lack thereof. Does Eddie feel warm to him? Cold? Does the touch bring Richie comfort? He hopes it does.

"So," Richie clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Seems like the ouija board was a ouija bust, babe."

Eddie laughs.

He likes to think that in that moment, maybe Richie can hear it. Even if it's just a whisper of a sound bouncing off the walls. Reverberations and nothing more.

Richie has started to talk to thin air.

It's endearing, nearing downright sweet, because Eddie knows it's for him. That Richie is speaking his thoughts out loud so Eddie can listen to them, like he'd be able to chime in with his own input. He can't, but it's the thought that counts.

Sometimes, it's innocuous aside comments, rhetoricals and little facts:

> "Man, you own a lot of sweatshirts. You like to be comfy, Eds?"
> 
> "Patty sent me a recipe, so I've gotta head out to the store to get ingredients. Huh, no milk. I should like, make an actual list, shouldn't I?"
> 
> "I'd offer you a smoke, but I know you wouldn't take it. Not just because you can't, just you always hated cigarettes. Except for when me and Bev would smoke weed, ha!"

Occasionally, it's about the others:

> "I wonder if they'd believe me about you. Mike certainly fucking didn't. But he- I don't know, he was nice about it? I think Bill would kick my ass, if he could reach it."
> 
> "Ben and Bev posted pics from their damn yacht again. At least _they're_ having fun. I think maybe her divorce got finalised, but like hell I'm checking the group chat."
> 
> "I think I might tell Patty. About you but um, about the clown too. She deserves to know what actually happened to Stan."

Rarely, and most worryingly, it's:

> "So, I've been looking into rituals again. I think I've found one that could actually work. It seems to line up with all the other info I've got. Wikipedia info, but still info!"
> 
> "Right, shopping list! Recipe ingredients, more cigarettes - hey, fuck it, let's get some wine! Then, uh, what did the ritual say? Some shit about candles for sure. Lemme check."
> 
> "What is it with witchcraft and sage. Man, just smoke a joint - that's spiritualism right there."

Eddie doesn't quite know what to do. He's pleased - more than pleased, really - that Richie is trying to get him back. But it seems... obsessive. Eddie wishes he could be there to bear the burden in halves. But that's kind of the point, isn't it?

He isn't there.

Richie follows the instructions to the letter. He methodically makes his way through every room in the house, burning sage and wafting it through the air in a figure eight. The place smells nice, at least.

He takes a seat on the floor in the centre of the living area, where he's pushed the coffee table to the side so he can draw a pentagram on the hardwood floors in chalk paint. The rug stands rolled up and safe, propped up against the far wall. He lights the candles at each point of the star and sits the burning sage in the centre, atop the pale blue polo Eddie had worn that first day back in Derry. It's strained down the left side with blood, browned now, from where Bowers had stabbed him in the face a lifetime ago.

(Richie tries not to think about how he'd left, then. How he'd run away. How he wasn't there.)

Then, Richie reads the Latin he found and tries not to butcher the pronunciation. The translation that came alongside it claimed it was a call for spirits, a request for magic itself to give them life, and a plea for communication. Richie feels a connection to the meanings of the words, even if he doesn't wholly know what the fuck he's even saying.

Hopefully, the powers that be get the gist.

Eddie, to his surprise, feels himself drawn.

He sits opposite Richie, at one of the points of the pentagram. His nose tickles at the smoke from the sage, which he should be annoyed at, but he's just shocked he can smell it at all. He tries to connect to it, the same way he tries to connect to Richie when he's dreaming. He feels that pull, even after Richie stops talking, sitting back instead with his eyes closed. He looks oddly serene, in that moment, lit only by candlelight and framed in sage smoke.

All at once, it stops. Snaps back, a string cut, a tether unbound.

The candles flicker out, and the smouldering sage smothers itself with its own smoke. The wisps of it curl around them both and--

And Richie is looking directly at him.

Eddie reaches out, and Richie reaches back in a daze. Their hands hover in the middle, poised to touch above the bloodied remains of his old polo shirt. Richie's hand shakes with the anticipation of it, and all Eddie wants to do is to hold them steady. Hold _him_ steady. So he reaches forwards.

They don't touch.

Instead, Eddie's fingertips pass through Richie's palm. Richie watches it happen, face going pale, eyes trained on the spot where they should have made contact.

Whatever smoke had given Eddie temporary form dissipates, loses its shape and merges once more with the air.

Eddie wants to scream. But even if he did, Richie wouldn't hear him.

He tries to channel those emotions, the ones that seemed to work before, and reaches out again and again for Richie. He scrambles over the ritual area, passing through it and leaving candles and all ultimately undisturbed. Eddie's hands gravitate to Richie's face, wanting to hold him and comfort him, but like every time before they simply pass through.

Richie - unseeing - lowers his face into the palms of his hands, shoulders shaking silently as he begins to sob.

They regroup. It takes time. Richie spends two days in bed, not doing much of anything at all, and Eddie stays right there with him.

Then, when the days start regaining some colour again, Richie cleans up the remnants of the failed ritual and picks up his phone. He dials the only number he ever dials anymore.

"Hey, you got a minute? Well, maybe more of an hour. It's gonna be a long one."

"Of course, Richie," Patty says. "I'll make a cup of tea."

And so Richie tells her. He tells her everything. He tells her about Eddie, about the ouija board, about the failed ritual. And most importantly, he tells her about the clown.

In the end, it feels good to get it all out. Maybe he really should see a therapist. Then again, what kind of therapist deals with alien demon clown related trauma?

"This is... a lot," Patty says slowly.

"Yeah, I know," Richie sighs. "Sorry for dropping it all on you. The clown especially can be a bit--"

"No, no, that's all fine," Patty interrupts. "Well, not _fine_. But I believe you. And you were able to see Eddie?"

"Uh, yeah."

"That's," Patty breathes, "gosh, that's incredible, Richie."

He really should stop being surprised at Patty supporting him, but once again Richie is taken off guard at the level of love this woman has.

"It failed, though. I didn't get him back."

"Honey, who gets necromancy right on the first try?"

"I wouldn't know, I don't meet many necromancers," Richie jokes. "But, yeah. Yeah, you're probably right."

"Talk to him," Patty tells him, firm. "Find him in the dream space and figure out together what went right and what didn't."

Eddie finds himself back in the void; they're above the platform the were stood on before, floating high above it and yet somehow still standing on solid ground. When he looks down at the patterns, spirals contained within huge boundaries, they begin to look a little like a mismatched pavement, or peculiarly ordered cobblestone.

Richie takes his hand and Eddie looks up, away from the spirals, to meet his eyes.

"I think it's belief," Richie says. He's calmer now than he has been in days. "I think we have to really believe in it. I don't think the ritual actually matters, it's all just tied to emotions. Like with IT."

Eddie squeezes Richie's hand, focuses on the weight of it - solid and warm - within his own.

"Yeah, I think you're right."

They find themselves opposite each other once more, sat cross-legged in the middle of Richie's bed. There's a breeze from the open window; if he focuses hard enough on the slight shift of the curtains, Eddie thinks he might be able to feel the coolness of the wind on his skin.

It's midnight. Richie spent the last hour on the phone with Patty, trying to hype himself up. There's a self doubt that lingers under the surface - Richie's own disbelief in himself, his feeling that he can never do anything right. But Eddie knows this about him, and he's more than ready to believe enough to fill in the gaps where Richie falters. They'll hold each other up. They always have.

And Eddie wants this. He wants this with a strength that scares him, he wants this more than he's ever dared to want anything before.

"Alright," Richie says to air, then swallows. "You ready, Eds?"

Then he pauses, like he's waiting for an answer. Eddie smiles at that, at him, warmth and fondness coming forwards like a flood. This stupid, caring, idiotic man.

Eddie reaches out, slots his hand into Richie's where it lays open palmed atop his knee. He doesn't think, doesn't give himself time to doubt. He just does it.

Richie's breath hitches in. He tightens his fingers around Eddie's, looks up, and freezes.

There he is.

Eddie, the outline of him, growing more solid by the second. Still spectral and hazy, but god he's there. Richie reaches for him, pushes himself up onto his knees and keeps their hands gripped tight, like if he ever lets go Eddie will disappear. He cups his palm to Eddie's cheek, over where he stab wound lays - a thin, somehow healed, red line.

"Hey, you," Richie whispers.

"Hey," Eddie smiles back.

Richie's eyes start to well up, vision going hazy with his tears. Eddie stares at him.

"Wait, fuck, Rich. Can you- can you hear me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, babe, I can hear you."

"Fuck," Eddie breathes out. He brings his hand up to grip the back of Richie's neck, pulls him in closer. "Fuck, Richie, I--"

"No, yeah," Richie lets himself be brought forwards, foreheads pressed together. "God, I can actually feel you. Not just- it's not just a dream."

Eddie wraps his arms around Richie's shoulders and Richie presses his lips to Eddie's cheek. Then the corner of his mouth. Then Eddie crosses the final hurdle and kisses Richie properly. Between them, their left hands remain clasped together.

When Richie pulls away, Eddie laughs, overwhelmed by it all. Once more, he presses their foreheads together.

"So, what now?" Eddie wonders. "We just wish me up a new body?"

"I mean, fuck, I guess so?" Richie answers, then nudges their noses against each other. "We seem to be blowing ghost rules out of the fucking park so far. I say we do whatever we like."

Eddie laughs again, absolutely elated. He brings both hands up to draw Richie into another kiss.

They pass through.

"What?"

"Eds?"

"What the fuck. No, no no-- no, we fucking- we _had_ it! We had it, no--"

"I," Richie looks down at his left hand, barren. "Fuck, I-- _Eddie._ "

And Eddie knows, instinctively, what went wrong: Richie placed too much belief in that first touch, that first connect. The moment it broke, the rest of the illusion came tumbling down with it.

"No, no we can-- shit, Richie, we can keep it going. We just need to--"

But Richie can't hear him. Not now.

"I _really_ believed, Eddie. Fuck."

Richie brings his hands up, rubs them over the face, presses them into his hair and grips near the base of his scalp. He leans forwards, brings his knees up, compresses himself down as small as he can go.

"We can still--"

"I fucking _believed_ in us, I promise," Richie's voice goes thready and thin. "I _promise._ I tried, I really fucking tries, okay?"

"I know. I know, honey."

"Why didn't it fucking work? What else do I have to do, do we have to-t, _fuck_! Fuck. Why can't I _ever_ do _anything_ fucking right?"

"Richie, sweetheart..."

But there's nothing Eddie can do. All he can do is sit and watch as Richie cries himself to sleep.

Eddie is in the dream space.

The moment Richie had fallen asleep, Eddie sent himself here. To see him, to comfort him, to just _be_ with him. This is the only way he can reliably do any of those things, so he's damn well going to use it.

But Richie isn't here.

Eddie looks around and sees nothing. It's empty, completely. Not even those strange spiral stones, beneath or above.

And then it's not.

Stand stand next to him, looking down at his shoes with his hands tucked into his pockets.

"Hi," he says, like that will explain it all.

"You," Eddie starts, but Stan holds up a hand to shush him and shakes his head. Which is well enough, because for all Eddie opened his mouth he doesn't actually know what would have come out.

"There's nothing I could say that would explain this. Let's just say that I wanted to talk to you," Stan shrugs. "But I get it. It's weird seeing you here. Usually it's just me, Patty, and the turtle."

"Turtle?" Eddie stutters out.

"Ah, you don't know about the turtle. Right," Stan sighs. "It's like... the counterpart to IT. But not evil, just, hm. They were brothers, siblings, opposing forces. The turtle is attached to us."

"Attached?" Eddie is beginning to feel like an echo. "The turtle is fucking _attached_ to us?"

"Maturin," Stan clarifies, like that means anything, "and maybe attached is the wrong word. I think it's amused, entertained by us."

"Oh, good," Eddie rolls his eyes, throws his hands up in exasperation. "That's much better - I exist because of the benevolence of a magic fucking turtle."

"You do," Stan quirks a little smile at him. "So do I. You should give it what it wants."

"What?"

Stan claps a hand on Eddie's shoulder.

"Put on a good show, Eddie."

And then Stan is gone.

And the turtle is there.


End file.
